F.18. ltree

F.18.1. Definitions

A label is a sequence of alphanumeric characters and underscores (for example, in C locale the characters A-Za-z0-9_ are allowed). Labels must be less than 256 bytes long.

Examples: 42, Personal_Services

A label path is a sequence of zero or more labels separated by dots, for example L1.L2.L3, representing a path from the root of a hierarchical tree to a particular node. The length of a label path must be less than 65Kb, but keeping it under 2Kb is preferable. In practice this is not a major limitation; for example, the longest label path in the DMOZ catalogue (http://www.dmoz.org) is about 240 bytes.

Example: Top.Countries.Europe.Russia

The ltree module provides several data types:

• ltree stores a label path.

• lquery represents a regular-expression-like pattern for matching ltree values. A simple word matches that label within a path. A star symbol (*) matches zero or more labels. For example:

  foo         Match the exact label path foo
  *.foo.*     Match any label path containing the label foo
  *.foo       Match any label path whose last label is foo

  Star symbols can also be quantified to restrict how many labels they can match:

  *{n}        Match exactly n labels
  *{n,}       Match at least n labels
  *{n,m}      Match at least n but not more than m labels
  *{,m}       Match at most m labels — same as  *{0,m}

  There are several modifiers that can be put at the end of a non-star label in lquery to make it match more than just the exact match:

  @           Match case-insensitively, for example a@ matches A
  *           Match any label with this prefix, for example foo* matches foobar
  %           Match initial underscore-separated words

  The behavior of % is a bit complicated. It tries to match words rather than the entire label. For example foo_bar% matches foo_bar_baz but not foo_barbaz. If combined with *, prefix matching applies to each word separately, for example foo_bar%* matches foo1_bar2_baz but not foo1_br2_baz.

  Also, you can write several possibly-modified labels separated with | (OR) to match any of those labels, and you can put ! (NOT) at the start to match any label that doesn't match any of the alternatives.

  Here's an annotated example of lquery:

  Top.*{0,2}.sport*@.!football|tennis.Russ*|Spain
  a.  b.     c.      d.               e.

  This query will match any label path that:

  1. begins with the label Top

  2. and next has zero to two labels before

  3. a label beginning with the case-insensitive prefix sport

  4. then a label not matching football nor tennis

  5. and then ends with a label beginning with Russ or exactly matching Spain.

• ltxtquery represents a full-text-search-like pattern for matching ltree values. An ltxtquery value contains words, possibly with the modifiers @, *, % at the end; the modifiers have the same meanings as in lquery. Words can be combined with & (AND), | (OR), ! (NOT), and parentheses. The key difference from lquery is that ltxtquery matches words without regard to their position in the label path.

  Here's an example ltxtquery:

  Europe & Russia*@ & !Transportation

  This will match paths that contain the label Europe and any label beginning with Russia (case-insensitive), but not paths containing the label Transportation. The location of these words within the path is not important. Also, when % is used, the word can be matched to any underscore-separated word within a label, regardless of position.

Note: ltxtquery allows whitespace between symbols, but ltree and lquery do not.

F.18.2. Operators and Functions

Type ltree has the usual comparison operators =, <>, <, >, <=, >=. Comparison sorts in the order of a tree traversal, with the children of a node sorted by label text. In addition, there are the following specialized operators:

The operators <@, @>, @ and ~ have analogues ^<@, ^@>, ^@, ^~, which are the same except they do not use indexes. These are useful only for testing purposes.

The following functions are available:

F.18.3. Indexes

ltree supports several types of indexes that can speed up the indicated operators:

• B-tree index over ltree: <, <=, =, >=, >

• GiST index over ltree: <, <=, =, >=, >, @>, <@, @, ~, ?

  Example of creating such an index:

  CREATE INDEX path_gist_idx ON test USING GIST (path);

• GiST index over ltree[]: ltree[] <@ ltree, ltree @> ltree[], @, ~, ?

  Example of creating such an index:

  CREATE INDEX path_gist_idx ON test USING GIST (array_path);

  Note: This index type is lossy.

F.18.4. Example

This example uses the following data (also available in file contrib/ltree/ltreetest.sql in the source distribution):

CREATE TABLE test (path ltree);
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Science');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Science.Astronomy');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Science.Astronomy.Astrophysics');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Science.Astronomy.Cosmology');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Hobbies');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Hobbies.Amateurs_Astronomy');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Collections');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Collections.Pictures');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy.Stars');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy.Galaxies');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy.Astronauts');
CREATE INDEX path_gist_idx ON test USING gist(path);
CREATE INDEX path_idx ON test USING btree(path);

Now, we have a table test populated with data describing the hierarchy shown below:

                        Top
                     /   |  \
             Science Hobbies Collections
                 /       |              \
        Astronomy   Amateurs_Astronomy Pictures
           /  \                            |
Astrophysics  Cosmology                Astronomy
                                        /  |    \
                                 Galaxies Stars Astronauts

We can do inheritance:

ltreetest=> SELECT path FROM test WHERE path <@ 'Top.Science';
                path
------------------------------------
 Top.Science
 Top.Science.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Cosmology
(4 rows)

Here are some examples of path matching:

ltreetest=> SELECT path FROM test WHERE path ~ '*.Astronomy.*';
                     path
-----------------------------------------------
 Top.Science.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Cosmology
 Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy
 Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy.Stars
 Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy.Galaxies
 Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy.Astronauts
(7 rows)

ltreetest=> SELECT path FROM test WHERE path ~ '*.!pictures@.*.Astronomy.*';
                path
------------------------------------
 Top.Science.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Cosmology
(3 rows)

Here are some examples of full text search:

ltreetest=> SELECT path FROM test WHERE path @ 'Astro*% & !pictures@';
                path
------------------------------------
 Top.Science.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Cosmology
 Top.Hobbies.Amateurs_Astronomy
(4 rows)

ltreetest=> SELECT path FROM test WHERE path @ 'Astro* & !pictures@';
                path
------------------------------------
 Top.Science.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Cosmology
(3 rows)

Path construction using functions:

ltreetest=> SELECT subpath(path,0,2)||'Space'||subpath(path,2) FROM test WHERE path <@ 'Top.Science.Astronomy';
                 ?column?
------------------------------------------
 Top.Science.Space.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Space.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Space.Astronomy.Cosmology
(3 rows)

We could simplify this by creating a SQL function that inserts a label at a specified position in a path:

CREATE FUNCTION ins_label(ltree, int, text) RETURNS ltree
    AS 'select subpath($1,0,$2) || $3 || subpath($1,$2);'
    LANGUAGE SQL IMMUTABLE;

ltreetest=> SELECT ins_label(path,2,'Space') FROM test WHERE path <@ 'Top.Science.Astronomy';
                ins_label
------------------------------------------
 Top.Science.Space.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Space.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Space.Astronomy.Cosmology
(3 rows)

F.18.5. Authors

All work was done by Teodor Sigaev (<teodor@stack.net>) and Oleg Bartunov (<oleg@sai.msu.su>). See http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/postgres/gist/ for additional information. Authors would like to thank Eugeny Rodichev for helpful discussions. Comments and bug reports are welcome.